5 Top UK Dives

1. Jersey lies 90 miles off the south coast of England. It has more than 50 miles of coastline, ranging from rugged granite cliffs to sandy beaches and hidden rocky coves. Offshore there are reefs and small islands and beneath the waves lie shipwrecks of all ages, shapes and sizes. The water around Jersey has some of the best visibility in the British Isles. It is always several degrees warmer than other British waters and is teems with marine life.

2. The St Kilda archipelago lies in the Atlantic Ocean, 45 miles west of the Sound of Harris in the Outer Hebrides. The archipelago consists of four main islands, Hirta, Boreray, Soay and Dun and numerous stacs, of which the Stac an Armin and the Stac Lee are the highest in Britain, being 191m and 165m respectively. This volcanic range contains some of the best cave and tunnel dives in Europe, with almost perfect visibility and what has been described as the finest marine life in Britain.

3. The granite topography of the Cornish peninsula extends far out to sea, forming reefs, pinnacles and shoals teaming with life. You can dive a deep wreck in the morning, a spectacular sheer drop-off in the afternoon and explore shoreline gullies and tunnels in the evening or after dark. The Gulf Stream divides around the peninsula on its path north, and the warmer, clearer waters it carries propagate a diversity of indigenous and visiting marine life not generally found elsewhere on our coastline. The headlands and offshore reefs are bombarded by nutrients borne by the strong tides on both coasts feeding a multitude of species of anemones, soft and stony corals and invertebrate life.

4. St Mary's Island is a ten-minute drive from Newcastle city centre. St Mary's Island first became an attraction for local people in 1862, when a salmon fisherman expanded his small croft and turned it into an inn. Because access to the island was tidal, meaning the police could only get over twice a day, the long opening hours made the place popular with local fishermen! Now it is the first leisure park underwater in the UK and soon it will have an underwater trail clearly marked for divers to navigate through wrecks and reefs underwater.

5. The Menai Strait, the narrow band of water separating Anglesey from mainland North Wales is a region of high turbidity - the water is green and visibility low, as a result of the vast numbers of minute particles and plankton suspended in the fast-flowing water. However the Strait is currently a proposed Marine Nature Reserve, with more than a thousand plant and animal species having been recorded in it and with a very variable sea-bed along its length.

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5 Top UK Dives

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